The thermal decomposition of metal-organic precursors for epitaxial growth of SrZrO3 thin films

• The decomposition sequences of the strontium complex have been proposed.
• The thermal decomposition of SZO precursor has been elucidated.
• The epitaxial growth of SrZrO3 thin films by CSD has been demonstrated.

In this paper the thermal decomposition of strontium zirconate metal-organic precursor is investigated by thermal analyses coupled with quadrupole mass spectrometry, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction measurements. Based on these analyses the decomposition sequence of both individual, and final precursors has been proposed. Starting from this precursor, SrZrO3 (SZO) epitaxial thin films have been deposited on (100)SrTiO3 (STO) single crystalline substrates at a temperature as low as 700 °C, by chemical solution deposition (CSD). The SZO films have a (0 1 0)SZO/(1 0 0)STO out-of-plane epitaxial relationship, and a good surface morphology with a root-mean-square roughness of about 0.8 nm. The structural and morphological properties of the deposited films demonstrate that these precursors are suitable for the deposition by CSD of high quality SZO epitaxial films for applications, e.g. buffer layer for YBa2Cu3O7-x -based coated conductors fabrication.